You did not have the Desktop Tile that I show in my screen shot? Hmmm. You might try Classic Shell and choose to Bypass the Modern UI while a solution is found. I wonder if somehow you uninstalled the Desktop Tile. Perhaps you can find a tile at the Win 8 App Store.

Hello Ted, no I don't have the desktop tile you showed. I changed the Classic Shell setting i.e. I unchecked Bypass the Modern UI because it was previously checked, to see what effect that would have, and now when I boot into Win 8 RP the Modern UI disappears in a flash and I am taken straight to the desktop, which is what I wanted anyway. Strange but true. The Win Key + D just leaves me on the desktop of course.

For what it's worth the fix Folder Navigation option seems to have gone from the Classic Shell settings. I would appreciate it if you could remind me how to get it back.

Ted, I should have remembered from a previous thread that the folder navigation problem was fixed in Win 8, and the Classic Shell option is no longer there for that reason. I got confused by the fact that I spent some time copying files to a USB flash drive, where the fix didn't work, but it does work otherwise.

Please forgive me if this is a stupid suggestion from a non-Win8 user.

Would it be possible for someone who has an operative Desktop tile to list its properties here so that royw could then create a new one himself? I'm guessing (perhaps totally wrongly) that tiles are very similar to shortcuts, and of course this approach would also rely to the program to which the shortcut is pointing still existing on royw's computer.

The Tiles do not have a Right Click Properties associated with them. The Modern UI is somewhat different than the Desktop UI. That's why a system Refresh may solve the problem. In Win 8, Refresh does just that, it refreshes the system files while keeping your files safe. From the above referenced web site:

Resetting your PC can take you back to square one if you encounter a problem, but that’s clearly a very heavy weight solution, something you’d only do as a last resort. But what if you could get the benefit of a reset – starting over with a fresh Windows install – while still keeping your stuff intact? This is where Refresh comes in handy. Refresh functionality is fundamentally still a reinstall of Windows, just like resetting your PC as described above, but your data, settings, and Metro style apps are preserved. We have a solution to help you with your desktop apps, too, which I’ll talk about a little later.
The coolest part about Refresh is there’s no need to first back up your data to an external hard drive and restore them afterwards.

The Following User Says Thank You to jwitalka For This Useful Post:

royw: SFC /scannow will do it! I succeeded in deleting the Desktop tile in my second day of testing 8 Pro (and am still not quite certain how). I wasn't sure whether to proceed with a Refresh or SFC / scannow, but concluded that the Refresh could always been run if the latter failed. It did not.